3/I. 11.

Dear A. M.! I have long intended to reply to your letter, but the escalation of the local squabbling here (curse it 100,000 times!) has kept me distracted.

But I do feel like having a good chat.

First of all, so I don't forget: Tria has been arrested together with Jordania and Ramishvili.

They say it's reliable. Sorry about the good fellow. A revolutionary.

Regarding the "Contemporary." I read today in "Rech" the contents of the 1st issue and I curse, curse away. Vodovozov on Muromtsev... Kolosov on Mikhailovsky, Lopatin "Not Ours" and so on. How can one not curse? And you, on top of it all, are positively taunting: "realism, democracy, activism."

You think those are good words? They are vile words, used by every bourgeois trickster on earth, from our Kadets and SR's to Brian or Millerand here, Lloyd George in England, etc. And they are vile, bloated words, and the content promised is SR-Kadet content. Not good.

Regarding Tolstoy I fully share your opinion that hypocrites and swindlers will make a saint out of him. Plekhanov too has gone mad with lying and servility before Tolstoy, and we agree on this point. He criticizes "Our Dawn" for this in the Central Organ (next issue) 21, I do so in "Thought"**

* The scoundrel Trotsky unites the Golovtsy and the Vperedovtsy against us. War!

** See V. I. Lenin. "Heroes of the 'Slip of the Tongue'" (Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 20, pp. 90-95). Ed.

(issue No. 1 just came out. Congratulate us - our little journal in Moscow, Marxist.
What joy we had today!). In "Zvezda" No. 1 (published in St. Petersburg 16. XII) there is also a good feuilleton by Plekhanov with a vulgar note, for which we have already scolded the editorial board. That fool Iordansky, probably concocted it with Bonch!
But where is "Contemporary" supposed to fight against "the legend of Tolstoy and his religion." Is that—Vodovozov and Lopatin? You're joking.

That they have begun beating students seems to me, on the contrary, encouraging, and one cannot let Tolstoy off with his "passivism," anarchism, Populism, or religion.

As for quixotism in the international politics of social-democracy, it seems to me you are mistaken.

After all, the revisionists have long been insisting that colonial policy is progressive, that it implants capitalism, and therefore "to expose it for greed and cruelty" is worthless, because "without these qualities" capital is like "without hands."

It would be quixotism and moaning if social-democrats were telling workers that perhaps somewhere there exists salvation outside of the development of capitalism, not through the development of capitalism. But we do not say this. We say: capital devours you, will devour the Persians, will devour everyone and will keep devouring until you overthrow it. This is the truth. And we do not forget to add: there is no guarantee of victory over it except in the growth of capitalism.

Marxists do not defend a single reactionary measure like the prohibition of trusts, the restriction of trade, etc. But to each his own: let the Khomyakovs and Co. build railroads through Persia, let them send Lyakhovs, while it is the Marxists' business to expose things before the workers. It devours and will devour, it strangles and will strangle—resist it.

Resistance to colonial policy and international robbery through the organization of the proletariat, through the defense of freedom for proletarian struggle does not retard the development of capitalism but accelerates it, forcing it to resort to more cultured, technically higher methods of capitalism. There is capitalism and capitalism. There is Black-Hundred-Octobrist capitalism and Populist ("realistic, democratic, full of activism") capitalism. The more we expose capitalism before the workers for its "greed and cruelty," the harder it becomes for capitalism of the first sort to maintain itself, the more inevitable becomes its transition into capitalism of the second sort. And that is in our favor, that is in the favor of the proletariat.

Do you think I have fallen into a contradiction? At the beginning of the letter I found the words "realism, democracy, activism" vile, and now I find them good? There is no contradiction here: for the proletarian they are vile, for the bourgeois they are good.

Among the Germans there exists a model journal of opportunists the "Socialist Monthly" ("Sozialistische Monatshefte") 22. There gentlemen like Schippel and Bernstein have long been attacking the international politics of revolutionary social-democracy by shouting that their policy, they say, amounts to "lamentations of pitying" people. This is the trick of opportunist scoundrels, my friend. Ask someone to get this journal from Naples and translate their articles, if you are interested in international politics.
No doubt you too have such opportunists in Italy—it's just that there are no Marxists in Italy, that's what makes her vile.

The international proletariat presses capital in two ways: by transforming it from Octobrist into democratic, and by driving Octobrist capital away from itself and transferring it to savages. And this expands the base of capital and hastens its death. In Western Europe there is already almost no Octobrist capital; almost all capital is democratic. Octobrist capital has left England and France and gone to Russia and Asia. The Russian revolution and revolutions in Asia = struggle for the displacement of Octobrist capital and for its replacement by democratic capitalism. And democratic capitalism = the last offspring.

It has nowhere further to go. Beyond that—it's finished.

How did you find "Zvezda" and "Thought"? The first—dull, in my opinion. But the second—it is all ours and brings me immeasurable joy. Only they'll shut it down quickly.

By the way, wouldn't you arrange for me a book on the agrarian question in "Knowledge"? Talk to Pyatnitsky. I cannot find a publisher, and that's the end of it. You might as well be crying bloody murder 23.

I read your postscript: "my hands tremble and freeze" and I am outraged. Those nasty houses on Capri! This is simply a scandal! We have steam heating here, perfectly warm, but you have "hands freezing." One must revolt.

I press your hand firmly. Your Lenin

I received from Bologna an invitation to come to the school (20 workers). I answered with a refusal*. I do not wish to have dealings with the Vperedovtsy. We are transferring workers here again.

(Italy)

Sent from Paris to the island of Capri

First printed in 1924

in Lenin Miscellany I

Printed from the manuscript